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by leaffig 4678 days ago
>This already happened with attack on VP8 even without any acquisition. MS hand behind it was not even very hidden.

Nokia was really starving for money and wanted to monetize their patents, and saw VP8 as a threat. Instead of waiting for it to be popular and then pounce, they pre-emptively requested Google(which is rolling in dough) to license their patents. They did spend a lot on R&D in their heyday, they're not a garden variety patent troll. If a CEO didn't try to get their patents licensed while hurting badly for money, they would be called out for it.

I fail to see any MS hand in this, hidden or not. Do you have any references to back that up?

1 comments

>Nokia was really starving for money and wanted to monetize their patents, and saw VP8 as a threat.

I doubt it. It looked more like an attack on the open web. MS and Apple always didn't like open codecs. They never even implemented them in their browsers and products. Nokia is not part of MPEG-LA, so they aren't really direct competitors codecs wise. So I see no point for Nokia themselves to be such jerks as to attack open codecs. It makes more sense to do such thing for MS or Apple, and MS is in closer proximity here.